Phil Shannon

Corporate exploitation of 'the people's game'

Foul! The Secret World of FIFA: Bribes, Vote Rigging and Ticket Scandals
By Andrew Jennings
HarperSport, 2006
386 pages, $32.95 (pb)

The A-B-C of public broadcasting

This is the ABC: The Australian Broadcasting Commission 1932-1983
By K.S. Inglis
Black Inc., 2006
525 pages, $39.95 (pb)

His soul goes marching on

John Brown, Abolitionist
By David S. Reynolds
Vintage Books, 2006
578 pages, $34.95 (pb)

The power of progressive purchase

Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping
by Judith Levine
Free Press, 2006
274 pages, $39.95 (hb)

A tale of two rolling heads

As a schoolboy, Maximilien Robespierre gave a speech of welcome for King Louis XVI in a 1775 coronation ceremony at his college in Paris. Eighteen years later, Louis was decapitated by Robespierre’s revolutionary government. What, asks Ruth Scurr in her biography of Robespierre, had turned the dutiful student into a regicide, whose name in conventional history has left behind “no trace but terror”?

Sympathy with the working poor

Kylie Tennant: A Life
By Jane Grant
National Library of Australia, 2006
156 pages, $24.95 (pb)

A former miltant's sad lament

Comrade Roberts: Recollections of a Trotskyite
By Kenneth Gee
Desert Pea Press, 2006
207 pages, $29.95 (pb)

Unforgiving class logic of the labour market

Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
By Barbara Ehrenreich
Granta Books, 2005
237 pages, $24.95 (pb)

Too much scorn buries the satire

American Hoax: Undercover in the USA (sort of)
By Charles Firth
Pan Macmillan, 2006
272 pages
$32.95 (pb)

An angry, funny expose of the arms trade

As Used on the Famous Mandela: Underground Adventures in the Arms and Torture Trade
By Mark Thomas
Ebury Press, 2006
339 pages, $35 (pb)

Terrorism and the grumpy old lawyer

Rumpole and the reign of terror
By John Mortimer
Penguin/Viking, 2006
184 pages, $39.95 (hb)

James Hardie's dusty secrets unearthed

Asbestos House: The Secret History of James Hardie IndustriesBy Gideon HaighScribe, 2006442 pages, $39.95 (pb)